“What can we learn from our children?”

I just saw this posted on my facebook timeline.

Tonight I asked [my infant daughter] if she could say "Jesus". She looked deep into my eyes and didn't say anything, but she watched my mouth as I repeated, "Jesus... Jesus". Then, I said, "Do you remember what Jesus looks like? Did you see him before you were born? What does Jesus look like?". She then hugged me tenderly and stayed there for quite awhile. I said His name a few more times, each time with resulting in her hugging/holding me and not letting go.
What can we learn from our children? — feeling blessed.

Well, here’s my answer to the question “What can we learn from our children?”

Your little child doesn’t know what the hell you’re talking about yet. She hugged you because either she was confused or she thought you were confused. But pretty soon, she’ll start saying “Jesus” and thinking there’s a nice little heaven place. And there’s a real lesson here to learn from your children: they start mimicking your behavior and beliefs; they absorb the stuff that’s around them without being able to critically examine it. See, they don’t know any better and that’s how their little infant brains work. (See the movie Jesus Camp for examples.)

Now, the person who posted that isn’t generally stupid. I think that like many people she’s got this intellectual blind spot when it comes to all that Jesus and God and church nonsense. And guess what, it was probably put there when she was a kid, and she never really got over it. So after rebelling somewhat as a young adult, she “came back to the fold”. That is, when things got a little rough in her adult life she reverted to the default setting she learned in childhood: Jesus loves me, and I can let the imaginary God deal with all the stuff I don’t want to think about…Whee!!!